


Like Unto the Gods

by titaniumsporkery



Category: Generation Kill, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Don't Ask Don't Tell, M/M, Military Homophobia, PTSD, when I say major character death I mean major
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-27 03:38:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titaniumsporkery/pseuds/titaniumsporkery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Generation Kill/Homer's Iliad mash up fic. It would behoove you to have read The Iliad but it's not necessary. Major, major character death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prayers to Broken Stone

_Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another._

They should have known it was too good to be true. It wasn’t a perfect relationship, but it was a relationship. Two guys, two Recon Marines, together, in the heyday of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t comfortable; it was awkward, and scared; a few furtive combat jacks in the dead of night, and a shared longing glance every now and then in a car that stank of piss and sweat and gunpowder, not daring to try for more because though they were sure of each other, they were also sure of the danger of the little that they already had.

Of course it didn’t last.

When they came home from the first deployment to Iraq, something was wrong with Ray. He came back with a brain that didn’t fit inside his skull any more because there was too much in it; too much noise and too many flashes and too much violence and too little of him, and who he used to be was like a distant memory, like a story someone read to him that he couldn’t quite remember--

\--And Brad would tell him who he was, when he woke up stiff and sweaty and crying in the middle of the night, curled up on Brad’s couch because he couldn’t sleep at all in the barracks any more, and Brad would tell him who he was, who he used to be: sharp and loud and bright and beautiful. And Brad would read his favorite poetry to him and the words would just fade in and out--

_We are the hollow men_   
_We are the stuffed men_   
_Leaning together_   
_Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!_   
_Our dried voices, when_   
_We whisper together_   
_Are quiet and meaningless_   
_As wind in dry grass_   
_Or rats’ feet over broken glass_   
_In our dry cellar_

\--Slowly, they refound themselves in each other. In piecing Ray back together, something came back to Brad. He hadn’t realized how little of him there was left, but it replenished, and they grew stronger in those few precious weeks they had, and something else grew between them. As the time passed, Ray moved from the couch to the upstairs bedroom, and they slept together like brothers sharing a bed, not willing to acknowledge how much they needed one another, on the edges, feet splayed so that they just crossed at the ankles, anchored by that one point of contact.

When they went back, they went with straight backs and strength in their hearts, sure and proud. Ray joked like he used to and Brad made condescending comments (though they were tempered with a softness in his eyes that wasn’t there before), and they talked shit about their COs, and in short they were good, almost as good as they were before. Except now there was a yearning, a need for closeness that they didn’t feel in California because they could have it if they wanted it, but now that the opportunity was gone it burned.

“I can’t do this, man,” said Ray, sitting on the edge of Brad’s dug grave late on the seventh night back in theatre, “I just can’t fucking sleep and when I do I keep dreaming and I can’t fucking do this” and Brad reached up and pulled him in, and they slept together in a hole in the ground meant for one, Brad’s presence soothing the shakes out of Ray’s limbs and keeping him whole.

_Let me be no nearer_   
_In death’s dream kingdom_   
_Let me also wear_   
_Such deliberate disguises_   
_Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves_   
_In a field_   
_Behaving as the wind behaves_   
_No nearer--_

They existed like that for a few months, with barked orders and affectionate vitriol and a couple of nervous late night combat jacks, and then it all started to go wrong. They were ambushed by a Fedayeen troupe outside Al Anbar, and a bullet had grazed Walt’s arm, not seriously injuring him, but scaring him into a shaking, sobbing mess. He was laying on the ground by the humvee crying in his sleep that night when Ray climbed trembling into the back seat where Brad was keeping watch.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, you whiskey tango piece of shit, we can’t do this tonight. We’re at 50 fucking percent watch that means everyone and their goddamned mothers will be awake.”

Ray just grabbed on to him and clung like a child to its mother’s chest, trembling and pale, and Brad let out a sigh and wrapped his arm around Ray’s shoulder. “Hey, hey hey hey, shh, I’m here,  Ray, I’ve got you,” he said, and Ray whimpered and pressed his face into the side of Brad’s reeking and filthy MOPP suit. “Hey. Look at me.” Ray shook his head, and Brad took his face in his hands and forced Ray to look at him. “I have you, nothing’s going to happen. I promise,” he said, and the look of anguish on Ray’s face became too much to bear and Brad leaned forward and pressed their lips together, whispering “I have you” against Ray’s shaking lips, “I have you” against the corner of his mouth, “I have you” against the side of his jaw and the line of muscle along his neck and the dip of his clavicle and he pulled open Ray’s MOPP suit and pressed him against the door of the humvee and whispered “I have you” to the bare skin of his sternum, and to each of his too-visible ribs in turn, and into the cavernous hollows of his hip bones and to the soft skin just beneath he had begun to whisper when--

“Colbert, what the fuck is going on here?”

All the tension that had begun to slowly melt out of Ray’s slight body came back in a sudden rush, and his face became dull and hard. Brad sat up to look blankly into the face of Encino Man. “Is there a problem, Captain?” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

Schwetje’s usually baleful, dopey face took on an as-yet unseen malice. “I don’t know, you fucking tell me, Sergeant.--Actually, you know what? Don’t. You boys are so lucky we’re already so far in the fucking shit that the company can’t afford to DD both your asses right this second. In the meantime, you, Person, put your fucking clothes back on and come with me.”

Ray mechanically began zipping up the front of his MOPP suit, hands shaking, when Brad stilled them with his own. “You can’t take my fucking RTO from me,” he threatened.

“Or you’ll what, Colbert? Attack a commanding officer? You should have thought of that before you sexually assaulted him. Person, out of the car, now.”

“Sexually ass--Ray! Get back in the fucking humvee,” Brad shouted, scrabbling to grab on to Ray as he stiffly got out of the car, and stood trembling visibly in the dim light. Brad launched himself toward Ray, and was blocked. Brad lowered his voice to a growl, “You can’t fucking do this. Not to him, not after all he’s been through. You can not.”

“I think you’ll find, Sergeant, that I fucking can,” Schwetje sneered.

“I’ll be fine, Brad, don’t do anything stupid.”

“The hell you will--”

“I said I’d be fucking fine, didn’t I?” said Ray, trying to stop shaking and shaking all the harder for his attempt. “I’m not a fucking girl.”

Schwetje grabbed Ray by the back of his collar like an insolent child and shoved him away from the humvee, and Brad collapsed into the doorway of the car, seething with helpless rage.

He was gone by morning.

_Is it like this_   
_In death’s other kingdom_   
_Walking alone_   
_At the hour when we are_   
_Trembling with tenderness_   
_Lips that would kiss_   
_Form prayers to broken stone_


	2. The Broken Jaw of Our Lost Kingdoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper

_The eyes are not here_   
_There are no eyes here_   
_In this valley of dying stars_   
_In this hollow valley_   
_This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms_

When morning came fast and cold and sharp over the desert, Ray moved with the slow discombobulation of a zombie, of a puppet with cut strings. For so long he had been part of a whole, of Iceman-And-Person, that alone he could no longer function. It didn’t help that he had been moved to Poke’s humvee, and he kept giving Ray long, laden, pitying looks--they all did. Rudy found him halfway through that first day and gave him a long, tight hug that left Ray shaking and pale. At night he wouldn’t sleep, hopped up on Ripped Fuel and jittery, but terrifyingly silent. He was conscious of being watched constantly, in shifts organized by Poke or Rudy or Fick, not that he knew or gave a damn. He would bark at the men to fuck off with a harsh rage that shocked them all the more in comparison to his now-constant blank silence.

They hit a town after three days of this, and were immediately greeted with gunfire, and as the first shot came through the windshield of the humvee, something snapped inside Ray and he began firing wildly, seemingly at random, out of the window, grinning fiercely and with a ferocity in his eyes that terrified poke more than the Hajis did.

“Corporal Person, … Ray,” he asked trepidatiously after the fighting had died down, “What in the fuck was that?” and Ray fixed him with his manic, savage grin and said

“I just killed a fuck ton of Hajis, motherfucker.”

This got around the platoon, and by o dark hundred, the men had started calling him Trombley Two.

The next day they were attacked in the early hours of the morning while they were camped, most of the men still asleep, and in the fury of panicked fire no one shot truer or killed more men than Ray.

_Sightless, unless_   
_The eyes reappear_   
_As the perpetual star_   
_Multifoliate rose_   
_Of death’s twilight kingdom_   
_The hope only_   
_Of empty men._

He became something of a hero, stood silent and blank as men congratulated him, offered him dip and MREs and Ripped Fuel. He didn’t engage, didn’t respond when men said that obviously he didn’t need The Iceman because he was stronger and tougher and better without him.

(but each day he would fight harder and more savagely for it, trying to shore up his sense of self, to become himself Person-And-The-Iceman, not realizing that all he was doing was further losing himself to the chaos around him.)

_Between the idea_   
_And the reality_   
_Between the motion_   
_And the act_   
_Falls the Shadow_   
_For Thine is the Kingdom_

And so it was the night before they were due to re-enter Baghdad when Poke was startled awake:

“I’m worried about Ray.”

Poke scrubbed a hand over his face, dropping the gun he had aimed on instinct as soon as he heard a voice. “Jesus, Colbert, where the fuck you been? They’re talking bout charging your ass with fuckin treason, you dumb white son of a bitch. 

“That doesn’t matter. I’m worried about Ray.”

“Yeah, dawg, you said that already. Why the fuck you worried about him? He’s doin the best I ever seen him do. He’s becoming an honest to god white savior, dawg. Better than your ass ever was.”

Brad shifted ever so slightly from one foot to the other and back, glancing over his shoulder wearily. Poke would always remember this as the only show of anxiety he had ever seen from him.

“Fuck that. Look, I’ve gotta go, Captain America’s about to come back around. Just. Watch him for me.”

“Brad--”

“Please, Tony.”

Poke sighed and appeared to age ten years in a few seconds. “Alright, Colbert, alright,” he said, shaking his head sadly, and when he looked up again, Brad was gone.

“Crazy ass white motherfucker,” he groused to the night air, laughing faintly, but unable to shake the sharp stab of unease that had lodged itself in his stomach.

_Between the desire_   
_And the spasm_   
_Between the potency_   
_And the existence_   
_Between the essence_   
_And the descent_   
_Falls the shadow_

Somehow the Fedayeen had known they were coming--had seen, had heard, and were waiting. The first humvee in the convoy hit a land mine, all of alpha two-three killed in an instant. Pandemonium struck. There were Hajis with AKs everwhere; on the rooftops, in the streets, climbing the humvees. It was impossible to see or hear anything from the gunfire and the muzzle flashes and the smoke. 

Years later, Poke could never say how he knew to look at Walt, but he did, glancing at him just in time to see a bullet pass through his shoulder, and for him to fall from the humvee. Dazed, Poke heard the driver’s side door of his humvee open, saw Ray in front of the humvee, heard screaming, crying, firing.

“I HAVE LOST TOO MUCH. I HAVE LOST TOO FUCKING MUCH YOU HAJI PIECE OF SHIT BASTARDS”

It was inevitable, really. One man, firing wildly, crying too much to even be able to see, against more than twenty focused killers. In that last moment, he wasn’t even a soldier; as the bullet tore through his throat he turned towards Poke, smiled weakly and screamed as best he could through the blood gurgling out of his throat and mouth:

“THAT’S ALL FOLKS,”

and with a last manic smile, he fell to his knees and was gone. 

_For Thine is_   
_Life is_   
_For Thine is the_

The Fedayeen were still firing but the entire platoon just stopped fighting, the humvees stopped moving, and no one said a word. Then there was a roar, hoarse and savage and raw, and a soldier-- _is that the Iceman? that’s fucking Colbert--_ ran into the middle of the crossfire, throwing his gun and sobbing, screaming. He threw himself on Ray’s body like he was trying to shield him from a bomb, though of course it was too late. His entire back lit up like fireworks, spurts of blood squirting from five, ten, fifteen holes, and he just lay there shaking and sobbing and screaming as he died.

_This is the way the world ends_   
_This is the way the world ends_   
_This is the way the world ends_   
_Not with a bang but a whimper_


End file.
